Can you put garlic in your pizza dough??

I have no pictures for this post due to user error. I thought I had uploaded all the pictures from my camera to the computer so I erased them on the camera. Duh!

I've been meaning to get back in the habit of making homemade pizza again and have been collecting recipes from my fellow bloggers for pizza dough. Judy of Judy's Kitchen has one on her blog that looks good and Rosie of Kitchens are Monkey Business makes and blogs about her homemade pizza on a regular basis.

I remembered reading somewhere that too much garlic can retard the action of the yeast so caution should be used when making bread doughs that contain garlic. I figured since Rosie makes pizza on a regular basis, that she would be a good person to ask about where the line is about how much garlic can you put in your pizza dough and still get a good rise. Rosie emailed me back saying that she had never heard of this but, was aware of sources that report that raw garlic cloves have the ability to cure yeast infections. (That form of yeast is Candida albicans and the yeast normally used in baking is Saccharomyces cerevisiae.) Rosie suggested that I just try it and see what happens and to please share my results with her.

I should have split the dough up so I would have a control but, I was feeling lazy so I just dumped in four large cloves ( like maybe six normal sized cloves) of minced garlic to my dough as it was mixing in the bread machine and let it go through its paces. I peeked in at the dough and it appeared to rise just like any other yeast dough I've made. When the machine finished, I had a nice, smooth, silky dough that was ready to be made into pizza. I smooshed out the dough on a baking sheet, and baked it at 425F for a bit till it just started to get some color. Then I pulled it back out of the oven, and topped it with tomato paste mixed with salt, pepper, and olive oil, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan cheese. Next, I put on some pepperoni, and some leftover crumbled up hot pork breakfast sausage . It was most tasty!

In conclusion, if garlic does inhibit the action of baking yeast, then you have to add more than I did.